Raging Bike

Being overtaken by the rider of a Navy Blue Bianchi Pista didn’t cheese me off this morning. I’d past him at a set of lights earlier on the commute into work and he caught back up and passed me as I was slowing for the next set of lights. The thing that annoyed me was the way he made absolutely no effort to stop for the lights that were on red and sailed nonchalantly through them. I ended up stuck at the next two sets of lights which also turned to red just as I reached them.

I haven’t worked out if I’m more annoyed about being overtaken by someone who jumped the lights and that as I didn’t give chase I wasn’t able to catch them up after that or whether it was the fact that because I didn’t, I ended up getting red lighted three times on the way to work. I’d like to adopt the My Name is Earl approach to this and think that karma will even things up in the long run…

Trail Riding

Saturday was very changeable weather wise so the decision was taken to head out on Sunday when the weather was much more favourable. The predictions were right and the conditions in the White Peak were good, sunshine, blue skies and a brisk spring chill in the air.

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The riding through the Derbyshire Dales gave plenty of opportunity to check out what was going on, which can be summed up as lots of lambs being looked after by sheep. The Tissington Trail and High Peak Trail were linked together to provide something a little more interesting than a straight there and back route.

Watt?

Yesterday I had a go on a Watt bike. To be honest I’ve felt better, I seem to be fighting off some sinus head cold thing again, so after my first effort I had the full on shakes and felt light headed and weak. Output 1210w. Went off and came back an hour and half later and had a second crack at it and managed to crank out 1311w. Still no where near the 2000w that Chris Hoy can manage, but still an interesting experiment.

Watt Bike

I’d like to try and get some fitness back and have another go. Surely I can break 1500w?

Gone Cold

Brrr. It’s gone cold again. The brief warm spell didn’t last long, but it seems like weeks since it’s rained, so I can’t complain about it to be honest! I’m not fond of getting wet on the commute. Looks like I’ll be moving offices in the next month. This may present some challenges in terms of commuting and access to secure bike storage and showers, but we’ll see what happens next… Dan Barham has a spangly new website, ch-check it out.

Go(ing) Chilly

I’d been meaning to give Chilly some rep for his fund raising efforts last Friday for Comic Relief. The crazy fool decided to do a ride to raise some cash, but it was no ordinary ride. It was a monkey bike ride – check out the footage.

The event was the culmination of not-very-much planning and a beer fueled night in the pub. The video was filmed by Neil and is now up on You Tube. It’s 5 miles from the Island site to the Broadland business park but the ride started on the top floor of an office block and Chilly rode all the floors before getting outside, you can see from the film that he didn’t stop!

It’s no surprise he felt the effects the next day – he was riding for 3:20hrs!

Snowdon

Rode Snowdon for the first time today, thanks to some great guiding by Ali Chant. Up the main path from Llanberis and down the Rangers Path with some added extra good bits on the way back. It was grim at the summit with lots of snow and ice.

Snowdon

Cold fingers warmed up on the descent. It was technical on the wet slippery rocks and we both decided that it wasn’t worth taking any silly risks given the weather. Only saw two walkers with a crazy chocolate Labrador in the three and a half hour we were out on the mountain.

Go Shaggy

John Ross has just completed one of the most grueling endurance races on Earth: Iditarod Trail. The consequences of failure in this event are probably higher than any other. Other competitors were knocked out of this years race by frostbite.

Shaggy

As dr j0n has said “it sounds like it might be the toughest conditions for a long time. Maybe ever.” Oh and he’s done the whole race on a Singlespeed… what a legend.

As background, the race has never before taken the winner more than about 5 days. Anchorage cycling phenom Peter Basinger who I interviewed for the Owners’ Club last year, made it in 3 days, 5 hours and 40 minutes in 2007. By 5th March, competitors had been on the trail for four days and were only about halfway to the finish line with nothing but miles and miles of bad trail or no trail ahead of them.

Jeff Oatley won this years race in a time of 5 days, 19 hours and 34 mins. He was followed by Tracy and Jay Petervary and then Shaggy who arrived shortly after in fourth place. Pete Basinger was the first skier in taking 5th place. Cory Smith took 6th place and Phil Hofstetter 7th. Oatley came in at 10:04 and the others mentioned arrived between 19:28 and 21:48.

Frankenbike

Jam sent over the photos below. It seems that Fred Williams Cycles doesn’t really do Christmas, in that they don’t sell childrens bikes or accessories. So no Barbie bikes, no Action Man bikes, no bells, no tassles, no scooters, etc. This year they had abit of time on our hands so we come up with an idea. It took a few days for Steve Williams to work it out and then we put the plan into action. Similar to an A-Team episode (except for the music and big gold jewellery) a bike went into the workshop as one incarnation and came out another.

Jam says he’s not going to say too much about this project as he’s going to put together a few video clips together to show it off properly but he hopes you’ll be impressed. Keep checking the website for more info…

New Rubber

It’s been a long time since any of my bikes have been shod with Wilderness Trail Bikes rubber (probably when Velociraptors were considered the ‘in’ tyres), but since the Nevegal death, I’ve decided to try a different combo on the Singlespeed for a while…

Tyres

Weirwolf upfront and a Motoraptor for the back. Lets see how they cope with what’s left of winter and the approaching spring…